


There Is No Reason Why

by skoosiepants



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-09
Updated: 2006-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skoosiepants/pseuds/skoosiepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zelenka was as hysterical as a man could be without actually making any sounds, and John was not freaking out. He absolutely wasn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is No Reason Why

Three days after the Daedalus arrived with a fresh batch of scientists and marines, Rodney was still blathering on about Dr. Yvonne Stein, the Most Beautiful Woman in Puppet Land, and Zelenka was giving John funny looks.  
  
And it wasn’t his customary uncomfortable this-may-kill-us-all grimace. There was a definite twinkle in his eyes, and he was snickering periodically, and John couldn’t figure out if he was laughing at him or at Rodney, but he didn’t like it either way.  
  
“What?” John hissed at him, leaning onto the commissary table.  
  
Zelenka pushed his glasses up his nose. “What?”  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
Zelenka blinked innocently. “I do not know. What is going on?”  
  
Oh, the little bastard was evil. John narrowed his eyes. “You’re up to something.”  
  
“Of course I am up to something,” Zelenka capitulated immediately, a sharp, tiny smile curving his lips. His hair looked ridiculous, tufting up around his ears.   
  
John automatically ducked his head and smoothed a hand over his own cowlick, but when he was done preening Zelenka had disappeared. Damn it. He was a slippery weasel, but John would figure out what he was up to sooner or later. He made a mental note to set Ronon on him – because Ronon doing whatever he said whenever he said it would never stop being cool, and no. No, he didn’t mean that in a remotely sexual way at all - then turned back to Rodney and Carson.  
  
Rodney, his I-am-smitten-with-someone-not-quite-as-umb-as-all-of-you grin in full effect, chin tilted up, had moved on to praising the sainted Dr. Stein’s mathematical abilities, and wasn’t that supposed to be a given in a renowned astrophysicist?   
  
John listened with half an ear, stabbing his mystery meat with his fork. Since when did Rodney praise his minions, anyhow? He showed his affection through gold stars and bar graphs, just so he’d never have to actually _say_ ‘good job’ out loud - and could yell and rant without remorse. It was a good system. John kind of liked being the only one to get an I’m-marginally-proud-of-you expression out of the guy.   
  
Granted, John suspected he mainly got that because Rodney actually didn’t have any expectations about John’s intelligence. Any flash of brilliance from John was unexpected and precious, while his handpicked top-of-their-field scientists had a lot to live up to.   
  
Which made the whole Dr. Stein is glorious in all things... thing even more annoying and weird. John really didn’t like it.  
  
At a sudden lull in conversation, he glanced up to see Rodney staring at him. “Yeah?”  
  
Rodney cocked his head to the side, bouncing his gaze pointedly at his mound of aerated meat. “Since you don’t seem to be actually _eating_ that...?” he trailed off leadingly, and John pushed his plate over with a sigh.  
  
Instead, John dug into his pie, because he was a firm believer that pie always made everything better.   
  
*  
  
Zelenka was as hysterical as a man could be without actually making any sounds, and John was not freaking out. He absolutely wasn’t.  
  
Dr. Stein was lounging across from him at the conference table, one arm hooked over the back of her chair, a small smirk curling her mouth, and it was like looking in a freaking mirror. A fucked up, gender-swapping mirror, but a mirror nonetheless. And she was _pretty_. Jesus Christ.  
  
John hissed at Zelenka out of the side of his mouth. “You couldn’t have just _told me_?”  
  
Zelenka looked affronted. “Where is fun in that?”  
  
Rodney was smiling at Stein goofily. Stein looked self-satisfied and loose-limbed, and even her _hair_ , short and dark and bedroom-mussed, was an eerie echo of John’s own hard-to-manage mop.  
  
John tightened his grip on his chair arms.  
  
Not freaking out.  
  
It really wasn’t a big deal. Rodney was drooling after his female counterpart. So what? There was absolutely nothing weird or wrong about that. It was just a strange coincidence, and Zelenka was probably the only one who’d noted the resemblance, anyway, and why was Elizabeth looking at him like that? He widened his eyes at her.   
  
She widened her own right back, then flicked her gaze towards Dr. Stein, and of _course_. Of course Zelenka wasn’t the only one to notice. Rodney was probably the only one who _didn’t_ , and judging from his rosy cheeks and admiring eyes, he probably wouldn’t care, anyway. And no, that was not disturbingly hot on any level.  
  
God. The whole situation was hellish. He really hoped his marines didn’t get wind of any of it.  
  
“Are you listening, Colonel?” Rodney snapped at him, and John started a little, surprised that Rodney had been paying even the least bit attention to what he was doing.  
  
“Sure, Rodney,” he drawled, half-grinning.  
  
Dr. Stein half-grinned back at him. Wow, that was creepy.  
  
Rodney harrumphed. “Yes, well, given the initial readings Dr. Stein took, I’m skeptical there’s anything of value on this planet, but the energy signal’s still strong enough to warrant a thorough check.”  
  
“Sounds good to me,” Elizabeth said, closing her laptop. “Any objections, John?” She looked close to laughing, her eyes crinkled at the corners.  
  
John clenched his jaw, then forced himself to relax. “Nope. We should be good to go early tomorrow,” he said, and then he hightailed it out of there before he threw up, because Stein was throwing coquettish looks at Rodney, and Rodney was bouncing on the balls of his feet, smiling like he always smiled at John, and that probably meant something very, very bad. John didn’t want to think about it.  
  
*  
  
“Is there something wrong, John?” Teyla asked him softly. She placed her sticks carefully on the ground and knelt in front of him.  
  
“No,” he muttered, banging his head back against the gym wall.   
  
Teyla arched her brows skeptically.   
  
“I’m fine,” he insisted tightly. He was totally fine. He was cool.   
  
It completely didn’t bother him that he’d caught Stein and Rodney making out in the hallway that morning, in plain sight of every _fucking_ body, plastered against each other, Rodney’s fingers buried in the short curls of Stein’s hair, knee between her legs, and just... her hands had been _everywhere_ , and John had wanted to _kill someone_ , and even the fact that Rodney had pulled back and away and shook his head on a wet exhale didn’t fill him with any less _burning rage_ , and he was so not fine.  
  
He was as far away from fine as any sane person could be, and going off his homicidal thoughts, he figured the sane part was arguable in his case.  
  
“Perhaps you should talk to Rodney,” Teyla said calmly.  
  
“I.” John took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m not going to. I can’t just. Talking to Rodney is—”  
  
“Difficult?” she suggested.  
  
He rolled his eyes. “Understatement.” Talking to Rodney about how much his attachment to his female doppelganger was fucking with his mind would be downright _painful_ , not to mention humiliating. “Let’s just.” He waved a hand towards the center of the room.  
  
Teyla gave him a half-smile. Bringing his anger into a session always seemed to make him more vulnerable to her attacks, since his concentration scattered, and stick-fighting was more about finesse than force.   
  
“I think we are done for today.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Do you believe Rodney even realizes?” she asked curiously, and John snapped, “I don’t _care_. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”  
  
But he couldn’t _stop_ thinking about it, and he got to his feet, hopping a little where Teyla’d seriously bruised his shin, and he gave her an exaggerated scowl before limping out into the hall and moving like an old man towards infirmary.  
  
*  
  
“Okay, you need to tell me what the hell your problem is,” Rodney demanded, stalking into John’s room without so much as a knock.  
  
John tried to subtly maneuver a blanket over his leg to cover the ice pack. “Hey, Rodney,” he drawled. “Come on in.”  
  
“Seriously, what’s going on?” Rodney crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin up. “Is this about Yvonne?”   
  
“Oh, so it’s _Yvonne_ , now?” John blurted out hotly, then instantly regretted it, pinching the bridge of his nose and slumping back against his pillows.  
  
“It is! It so is,” Rodney crowed, triumphant and angry. “I can’t _believe_ you!”  
  
“Rodney—”  
  
“No,” he cut in, starting to pace the small space at the end of John’s bed, “no, I’m going to talk, and you’re going to _grow up_ , because this isn’t a competition, Colonel, but you can’t stand that Dr. Stein likes me better than you.”  
  
John choked on a hysterical laugh. “Rod—”  
  
“Oh my god, shut up! Just shut up and,” he flailed a hand, glaring red-faced down at John – which _so_ wasn’t hot - “let me be happy for once. Stop being an asshole and stop avoiding me or I swear to god, Colonel, I’ll invent new and hideous ways to make you miserable.”  
  
Oh, that was a good one. John snorted. And, Jesus, let him be _happy_? “You need to let this go,” he said slowly, temper carefully coiled.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Rodney snapped. “And _you_ need to be okay with—”  
  
“Fuck, Rodney,” John exploded, jerking upright, “I’m not okay with it, I’m never going to be okay with it, because you’re dating _me_!”  
  
Rodney froze. “Wait, what?”  
  
John closed his eyes and pressed a palm into a socket. “That didn’t come out right,” he groaned, and it was eerily silent. Way too eerily silent. He peeked out over his hand, wondering if Rodney had stomped out of the room in the wake of John’s total abject embarrassment, but the man was just staring at him, blue eyes wide and strangely vulnerable around the edges.  
  
“Are you, did you mean....?”  
  
“I meant,” John said with a weary sigh, “that you need to take a good long look at Dr. Stein, and then come back and tell me what you see.”  
  
*  
  
It was, apparently, Rodney’s turn to avoid John.   
  
John might’ve been okay with it if Stein hadn’t been giving him evil looks that exactly matched _his_ evil looks - except John was fairly sure that he’d never actually been truly evil in his life. Mischievous, sure. A bit of a dickhead; yeah, he wasn’t going to argue that one. He’d been called an asshole once or twice or fifteen times. No denying that. But evil was a whole different barrel of monkeys.   
  
John also thought he might’ve been taking over the prescribed amount of painkillers for his leg.  
  
Gossip was, though, that Rodney wasn’t seeing any less of Miss Yvonne – just less of _John_ \- and he figured that warranted a valium or two.  
  
And then one night three days later Rodney showed up at John’s door, head bowed and hair mussed and a decent sized hickey burning the underside of his jaw.  
  
“Okay, so you might have possibly been right,” Rodney said, looking anywhere but at John as he pushed past him into his quarters.  
  
“Might’ve possibly?” John echoed incredulously, spinning to face him. Half of him wanted to just let Rodney off the hook and sidestep the whole embarrassing mess, but another, more masochistic part wanted to know what the hell Rodney had been thinking. “She’s. She’s _me_ , Rodney.”  
  
Rodney’s lips twisted into a scowl. “I know.”  
  
“ _Me_ ,” John stressed.  
  
Rodney’s eyes darted to him and away again. “You know,” he started, then swallowed thickly. “You know, it’s actually. It could be a _good_ thing.”  
  
“How in the world could this be good, McKay?” John growled.  
  
“Well, you’re you.” He waved a hand around, flailing to encompass John’s entire body. “You’re, well. We’re close, we’re good friends, so why wouldn’t a female version of you be…”  
  
John shook his head vehemently. “It’s not. It’s fucking creepy, Rodney, and it’s in _no way_ good.”  
  
Rodney’s chin came out, set on stubborn. “Well, I’m sorry if the thought of dating my best friend is—wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “Wait, this is some sort of homophobic freak-out, isn’t it?”  
  
“This is not a homophobic freak-out!” John exclaimed, exasperated by Rodney’s complete inability to _see_. “This is _you_ wanting to date a female version of _me_ , and excuse me if that makes me feel kind of left... out.” Uh oh. John snapped his mouth shut and pretended that he hadn’t just said that, because he’d sounded a little too—  
  
“Female version of you,” Rodney said slowly, thoughtfully, “ _instead_ of you.”  
  
John pressed his lips together and willed his cheeks to _not get red_ , because Air Force lieutenant colonels did not blush.   
  
And that certainly wasn’t even the whole issue; wasn’t even the _important_ issue, because whether or not Rodney would ever be interested in John had nothing to do with the fact that Dr. Stein was John’s evil twin with _breasts_ instead of a goatee, and John had serious doubts they could coexist peacefully between Daedalus runs.  
  
He turned his head away to totally not pout at the floor - because Air Force lieutenant colonels didn’t _pout_ , either - and Rodney took the opportunity to tackle him onto the bed.   
  
John clocked his head against the wall, and his vision went spinning, and when he blinked the ringing out of his ears, Rodney was petting his hair and whispering sorry against the juncture of his neck and jaw, solid body pinning him to the mattress, and John muttered, “She gave you a _hickey_ ,” in a really not petulant voice, even as his hands came up to cup the back of Rodney’s neck.  
  
Rodney pulled back and grinned at him, smug and a little fond, then graciously offered, “You can give me one, too,” before gripping his biceps and leaning down and _kissing_ him, opening his mouth over John’s, and John’s mind absolutely did not go to a Very Bad Place, because Air Force lieutenant colonels didn’t fantasize about threesomes with their busty evil twins and head scientists. At all. Ever. For real.  
  
And then Rodney did something really hot with his tongue and teeth, and his hands slipped down to John’s waist, smoothing his shirt up, big and warm on his bare skin, and John forgot all about twins and breasts and threesomes and women in general, and he might’ve said that part out loud, because Rodney chuffed an amused laugh against his chest, and he was pretty sure Rodney would never ever let him live it down. At that exact moment, though, Rodney’s mouth sliding down his sternum and his fingers hooked over the waistband of his boxers, he kinda didn’t care.


End file.
